Atom RSS

As we mentioned on Tuesday, Maury Brown, the founder of The Biz of Baseball and an author for Baseball Prospectus is the Q&A within this week's edition of USA Today's Sports Weekly magazine. The print version has 5 questions on page 4.

SW: Can you foresee a situation where congress would actually change baseball's anti-trust exemption status? At least one congressman mentioned looking into football's exclusive deal with DirecTV -- if baseball signs the same deal, could they end up angering the wrong congressman? Or would steroids be a bigger threat?

MB: While having an exclusive agreement for MLB Extra Innings to only be on DirecTV, and therefore disenfranchising a large part of the possible viewing market is something that will raise the ire of some in Congress, I don’t know if it’s enough to get them actively engaged in anti-trust discussions of any seriousness. For one, there is the option of MLB.TV, so fans can at least watch online. While this is hardly an exceptional alternate solution, it is, none the less, a solution.

As for the issue of steroids, I think George Mitchell’s remarks at the Owners Meetings this past week are something to take seriously. If he issues a scathing report outlining stonewalling on the part of the Clubs and players, I think we could see the power of subpoena come into play with Congress in the mix. Whether that leads to threats and of removal of anti-trust, I doubt it. With MLB having the most stringent testing policy of all the Big-4 sports, the worst scenario would be some form of narrowing of the exemption in some fashion, and even then, I think it’s an extreme stretch.

OTHER EXTRA INNINGS ONLY ON DIRECTV ARTICLES ON BIZ OF BASEBALL (from oldest to newest)